Reparative Counterspeech


How should we respond to hate speech under conditions of democratic backsliding? In this paper, I address how we should respond to hate speech that has already occurred; cases where where state inaction (or complicity) in relation to such speech compounds the harms of hate speech. Some have defended the value of coercive constraints by the state as an appropriate response to such speech. Others have argued that, rather than drawing on coercion, we should mobilise counterspeech as a response to hate speech. In this paper, I advance reparative counterspeech as an alternative to these two strategies, especially under circumstances characterised by democratic backsliding. Under reparative counterspeech, those who have engaged in hate speech would be required to apologise and retract their message. While such a requirement is (coercively) imposed on offenders, it centres counter-speech as a way of mitigating the dignitarian harms of hate speech and its impact on the democratic standing of its victims. I argue that this approach is superior to the use of coercive constraints, which are inadequate given their (a) excessive focus on deterrence; (b) the implicitness of their expressive function; and (c) inability to disaggregate hate speech claims. Further, I argue that reparative counterspeech is also preferable to ‘standard counterspeech’ on principled as well as instrumental grounds.